Jason Rabinowitz with puppet
Usually I like my interviews a little bit longer, but the speed of the release of Great Pretenders Club, the excellent album from Brooklyn duo The Pop Ups demanded something shorter. Also, given its relative secrecy -- announced and released within a week -- I couldn't do something more extensive. (I tip my hat to the band, though, for keeping such a tremendous work under wraps.)
But Jason Rabinowitz, one half of the duo, did answer a few questions last week about the process of creating the album, his influences, and what we can expect in the weeks and months to come.
Zooglobble: “Great Pretenders Club” is the first kindie “instant album” (meaning, released almost as soon as it’s announced) -- how long have you been working on it?
Jason Rabinowitz: From the moment we started writing until the moment it came back from mastering was about 3 months. It was hard to keep it under our hats that whole time.
How did the association with Amazon Music come about?
Our manager (at mTheory LLC) was at Amazon for a meeting (not about us) and threw our hat in the ring. (I'm going to try and mention the word "hat" in every answer here.)
The album has a definite ‘80s vibe, even more so than your other albums -- do you have any favorite albums from that era?
Purple Rain, Thriller, Graceland: the big three.
Remain In Light. Doolittle. She's So Unusual. Voices. Freedom Of Choice. Tom Tom Club. Even Worse. Spike.
Anything by Men Without Hats.
Also a lot of 70's albums. Too long to list but some highlights: Tusk. #1 Album. Fulfillingness First Finale.
More more more!!!
What else will you be doing with the album and the music from it?
We're making a video for all 11 songs on the album that will stream as a Pop Ups block on Amazon Prime! Very excited about that! So... Hats off to that idea!
